nGAGE Talent performed strongly in the financial year to March 2023, capitalising on high activity levels in recruitment and talent management markets. Turnover increased by 22% to £707 million and both NFI and EBITDA grew by 20% to record levels of £100m and £27 million respectively, which was all achieved organically.

The business benefitted from its strategic exposure to a diversified group of end markets with strong long term growth dynamics. Whilst global macroeconomic uncertainty in the second half of the year impacted recruitment activity levels in the technology sector in particular, the group continued to trade very strongly elsewhere, such as in the health and social care sectors. Also, the business continued to benefit from trends towards outsourcing reflected in the growth of its Managed Service business which grew NFI by 45% on the prior year where spend under management has increased to a record level of over £600 million.

The resilience of nGAGE’s performance has been helped by its mix of business with temporary recruitment up 26% and permanent recruitment up 8%. The group has repositioned its trading brands in the STEM sector to resilient specialisms such as Google Cloud and RDK, and it has continued to invest in headcount in sectors which are still growing such as healthcare.

nGAGE‘s global platform uses enterprise level capability to grow specialist recruitment businesses. Leveraging its International Service Centre (ISC), modern technology infrastructure and applications, nGAGE supports ambitious recruitment consultants to build and grow dynamic businesses which have the potential to become leaders in their market niches. Now, with an international offering these consultants can focus on deep global market penetration, whilst continuing to provide outstanding service delivery. The group has developed a unique equity incentive scheme to allow entrepreneurial recruiters to benefit from the growth and value they generate.

Tim Cook, nGAGE Group CEO, said, “The last 12 months has been an interesting recruitment market for sure. Our investment philosophy of ‘always needed’ and ‘structural growth’ sectors is reflected in our triple hedge model by sector, geography, and service line. This has served us well during uncertain times and underpins the robustness of the model. The Health & Social Care divisions have accelerated across the period, and our MSP business has grown rapidly, exceeding £600 million of spend under management (SuM). Exciting times! We have seen a softening of the `direct hire’ market - particularly in the US technology sector, which will surprise no-one. This has been largely offset by the growth in other divisions and from my perspective, I can see plenty of upside over the coming year.

Our continuing investment in our tech-enabled platform ‘nABLE’ has allowed us to increase productivity, at a lower cost, with our unique combination of RPA/AI, out-sourcing and off-shoring driving our industry leading conversion metrics. Our recent investment in the acquisition of Ryalto also strengthens our fast-developing SaaS product offerings, working with our customers to deliver strategic solutions above the transactional day-to-day. Our VMS platform and our Communications and Engagement solutions are helping our customers navigate a supremely complex and diverse workforce. Our cloud-based VMS contingent workforce management software, BridgeVMS, has been launched successfully to third party customers.

The ’world of work’ is a most fascinating place with a mix of hybrid, outsourcing and contingent workforces delivering core competencies of our customers’ go-to-market offerings. It’s a complex world and we are here to help candidates and our corporate customers.

Looking ahead, I expect the M&A market to start to reinvigorate itself over the latter part of the year and we expect to be active in that space as well as drive our organic growth. We are launching some new and exciting incubators to take advantage of this changing world. We are looking forwards with some relish to whatever the world will throw at us next!”

Tim Cook
Group CEO
nGAGE Talent